n her 2015 book The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic, esteemed music journalist Jessica Hopper delivered a long-overdue entry in a canon of that’s been dominated by men for as long as it’s existed. But her new book, Night Moves, is a different kind of animal: an elegant, loosely constructed memoir of her time in Chicago in the mid-aughts. It’s a peek into the intimate inner life of a writer whose work has helped shape a generation of music critics, but you don’t have to be a die-hard music nerd to appreciate Hopper’s observations. Her writing is gentle and fluid, and you feel as though you’re riding alongside her as she narrates her bike journeys across Chicago. Following this Thursday evening discussion in Durham with Merge Records’ Mac McCaughan, Hopper reads again on Friday at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill with Lydia Loveless. —Allison Hussey